A Culture of Development: Sopra Steria's Talent Programmes in Focus

At Sopra Steria, we’re committed to driving positive change not only for our clients, but also for our people, the world we live in, and the communities we serve. Achieving this requires having the right people on our team. That's why we focus on investing in our talented colleagues, ensuring they have the resources and opportunities to grow and thrive here.

Our approach to talent development helps us build a diverse and highly skilled workforce, enabling us to deliver innovative solutions and industry-leading expertise to our clients. This year, we’ve taken significant steps to enhance our development programmes, ensuring that everyone at Sopra Steria has access to opportunities that empower them to excel in their careers. This includes our wider family of brands, including Shared Services Connected Limited (SSCL) and NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS).

Our efforts have been recognised with ranking in the Great Place to Work® ‘Development’ category, a testament to our ongoing commitment to create a growth-oriented workplace.

Our talent programmes

At Sopra Steria, we have two core talent programmes; Ignite, which is aimed at colleagues who are in the early stages of their career, and ELEVATE (previously known as Emerging Leaders), which is designed for more senior colleagues who are identified as our leaders of the future. Both programmes take place over six to seven months, with plenty of networking and a variety of learning styles to keep everyone engaged. In addition, we have a couple of international programmes that our people can get involved in.

Our Women in Leadership programme supports women across our organisation to develop a wide range of skills, as well as the mindset and confidence to progress their careers into leadership. And the Accelerate programme supports high-potential individuals as they learn to successfully lead Sopra Steria in an evolving environment.

“I took part in the Ignite Programme in 2023, which sparked a passion in me for Project Management. I achieved an AgilePM accreditation and saw a project support role advertised on our internal careers site not long after. The Ignite programme inspired me to get out of my comfort zone and take on new opportunities, and ultimately a new career path.”

Darian Saeedi, Project Support - Resourcing

Our internal talent community

In January this year, we launched our first ever in-person internal talent community event. We brought alumni from previous talent programme cohorts together, along with senior leaders and guests from across the organisation. The day involved networking and taking part in an interactive workshop on influencing styles.

Mentoring

Of the nearly three million people employed in the UK tech industry, just 29% are women, according to the latest Diversity in Tech report by Tech Talent Charter. It's also well documented that black and ethnic-minority colleagues are under-represented. And this is something we want to address within our organisation.

Every year, we run structured mentoring programmes for our female colleagues and for colleagues from under-represented ethnicities to support them with their career development. And nearly a third of our mentees have advanced their careers with us so far through promotion, expanded responsibilities, or have moved roles since the programmes began.

“I’ve been a working mum for the last 11 years and I jumped at the chance to get involved, to re-evaluate what I wanted from my career. I’ve been able to expand my network and gain advice on career progression and skills development. I feel re-energised in my career and I'm excited about the future.” 

Aimee Aiken, Marketing and Communications Consultant

Career coaching

When you’re considering making a job change, talking things through can be so valuable. The career coaching sessions we offer to our internal colleagues are completely confidential. We encourage people to talk about their aspirations, experience and skills. We then offer guidance to find job matches from our range of open vacancies, as well as support with interview preparation and network opportunities, if required.

“Through a number of career coaching sessions, I was challenged to think about where I really wanted to be and where my skills and personality would serve me the most. I was able to complete a course - paid for by the company - to help with transitioning into the area I was interested in. When a suitable role became available, my career coach put in a recommendation for me. I'm now working in a sector that I had only dreamed of when I previously thought I was too old to retrain!” 

Cheryl Holt, HR Case Management

Learning hub

There are more than 10,000 courses available for our colleagues to access in our learning hub. And every month up to 100 courses, podcasts, and resources are added or refreshed.

Over the past year, more than 35,000 courses were completed by our people. We encourage our colleagues to invest time in their continued learning by building in a minimum of six days’ training into people’s personal objectives.

“I've never been in such a privileged position in my working life to have so much time to dedicate to my development. Having targeted time has definitely made me feel more motivated to spend time during working hours on bettering myself, expanding my knowledge and learning ways in which to work more effectively.”

Olly Walker, Senior Tech Recruiter

Investing in our colleagues’ growth

Our talent programmes are the cornerstone of our long-term commitment to fostering growth and opportunity. By investing in the development of our colleagues, we ensure that everyone has the chance to reach their full potential.

Our ambition in the talent development space is to increase the number of people we support through our programmes, while bringing more opportunities to our alumni, helping them develop connections across our wider organisation.

Find out more about our talent programmes here.

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